Posts Tagged ‘ENL’

A few days ago, in case you missed it on the Bristol Pitbulls’ Facebook page, my return to was confirmed. I’m really happy to be back in Bristol and it should be an amazing season of hockey to come. The team is looking really good on the ice already.

After the initial anxieties of where to play, I’m now looking forward to actually getting going and get to playing games. It took me a while to find my legs (and hands for that matter) when I got back on the ice and the first training session felt like I needed a GPS (Sat Nav) on the ice to know where I was going.

I’ve also finished my off-season/pre season workouts at the gym, but as you all know, hockey just doesn’t stop there. I’ve rested for this week and starting next week I’m going to start hitting the gym again. I will actually look into doing a post of the Off-season in numbers, might be fun to read and fun for me to quantify the number of time I invested into this season. Though to be honest, it doesn’t matter really. I love putting in the work for hockey and getting a good sweat going as I know that it will help me immensely on the ice.

I’m still in the running for the Sherwood hockey sponsorship as well in the competition so if you wouldn’t mind voting for me at: https://www.facebook.com/NekotiSherwoodAmbassadorProgramme/app_406909062688689.

I was imagining that my first post of 2012 would have been a cheerier one. However, we were told on Thursday at training that our barn is going to be closing down and we, the Pitbulls (and the junior teams, the rec team, the university team and ice skating club) would become homeless at the end of the season.

The lease on the rink is running out and the rink is set to be converted into student accommodation. Not that I have anything against students or further education, but the situation is far from ideal. In fact thinking it purely from the hockey point of view, I feel like the people who have put the Pitbulls together and ran the team have had a severe kick to the teeth due to the decision.

As I’ve had a chance to reflect on the news for a few days, I have come to realise that the biggest loss of the rink closure is not the loss of hockey, but it is the loss of a place that has become a second home to myself and all my team mates. It could potentially also mean the loss of a group of guys who have become like a second family. We have all sweated and bled on to the ice to provide our fans and supporters with an entertaining night out and we as players have relied on each other. We have experienced highs and lows every week that we turn up for training and suit up, ready to hit the ice. Like I’ve said many times before on this blog, being on the ice is one of the best feelings I can imagine.

Beyond hockey however, I have read and recanted numerous tales from Facebook and Twitter on people’s memories of the rink. I have come to know stories of people who have met the love of their life on the ice, memories of nights spent with friends and most of all, people lamenting the loss of a place to meet up and spend time.

As I’m not a native to Bristol and I have only spent two seasons with the Pitbulls, I have only a handful of memories compared to most of the other guys on the team who took their first strides on the ice at the facility. However, the situation sounds all too familiar; when I first arrived in the UK in Southampton to study I was told that the town used to house a rink, but it was torn down (now what stands in its place is a Range Rover and Jaguar dealership) and a new rink was promised by the council. Given that I have been in the UK for 8 years and there’s no new rink in sight (OK the Southampoton rink has been shut for nearly 30 years now) one can understand why the loss of a ice facility is a BIG deal to everyone who uses the facility.

In what is the Olympic year for the UK, there has been a lot of discussion about the state of British sports. How can the UK nurture the next sporting talents if facilities for sports of all kinds are being cut down. In a broader scale, the economic downturn has cut funding from many sports and leisure centres that provide both the young and old the opportunity to partake in sports, be it hockey, skating, soccer or boxing. Sports is an enabler. If I didn’t do sports in my youth I wouldn’t have learned valuable social skills and I probably would’ve spent more time than I did out in town partaking in teenage debauchery. Sports taught me a great deal of self discipline and respect to others.

However, as I’m trying to look for a silver lining in the news of the rink closing down, I am hopeful that it will not mean the demise of hockey in Bristol. I am hopeful that the powers that be build a new rink that is suitable for hockey and figure skating. Hockey is a growing sport in the UK and I’m sure that all our opponents would agree that there needs to be a team in Bristol. Say what you want about the state of the facility, it’s more fun to play more games than have fewer games on the schedule.

As my parting thoughts, I would like to see as many of you readers sign this petition to show your support for the rink. It only takes 30 seconds of your time and we (the people who use the rink) would really appreciate the support: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-the-ice-rink/

Remember the days when sayings like Winning and Tigerblood were the talk of the town? Yeah neither can I, or I can remember winning and it’s Twitter hash tag #Winning making the rounds. Oh how appropriate that hash tag would be right now.

I knew the team would be strong and would have a good chance at challenging teams, but to start the season in this fashion has been great. I think the win against Romford showed that the team has some real character and balls! In the lead up to the Finns winning the world championship there was a lot of talk in the press how the team had more balls and courage to do stuff and I think the win against Romford really showed that the team is capable of doing anything when we set our minds to it.

The game was tough, I’m not denying that and I give all credit to the Romford guys. They kept us honest for the whole 60 minutes and did not give up. I like games like that. I remember being on the bench in the third and keeping a watchful eye on the clock, thinking “Another 5 minutes and we’ve got this”. I was on the ice when the buzzer went and, well what can I say? It was pretty epic.

We’ve got another game coming up this weekend and we need to work hard in training, as there were still a few things that left something to be desired for in the Romford game. The passion is definitely there, but we just need to make sure the passion shows from the word go and we don’t turn up flat.

This off season/pre season has been different from others that I’ve had, for many reasons. I don’t think that ever during my career my body (and mind) were so beat from the season. The mind pretty much due to the concussion rather than the mental strain from the season.

So for the first time in my life I was faced with a wholly new challenge. My hip was in a pretty bad shape, my head was a total mess and I was tired. Pretty much from finishing the last game of the season I knew that the summer was going to be far from easy, but then again, hockey doesn’t really give you a long summer holiday.

I think I gave myself about a week off from the ice and then started to hit the gym. While it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do with the ongoing concussion symptoms, I needed to do something. Running made my head feel worse and the doctors said that I was OK to do light weights and go easy. Too bad I have a different idea of going easy to the doctors.

So I was able to train really hard through April and I thought that I had overcome the concussion issues. My body started to feel better and I felt stronger physically, but I was still hitting a wall. I was helping out at one of my wife’s trainings on the ice and I was doing a regular skating drill we did throughout the season. I was probably going at about 60% and I just literally didn’t know what the hell was going on. I went pale, blacked out and almost passed out. From skating at about 60%.

This then lead to heated debates and arguments about what I should and shouldn’t be doing and being a bone head I told everyone to STFU and let me decide what’s best for me. As a compromise I agreed to take a week out of training to give myself some extra time to re-coup.

If you follow me on twitter, or are unlucky to have me as a friend on Facebook, you know what happened to me on my first run after I resumed training. I was about 800meters from the office and I was doing a visualisation and mental exercises while running. I was so focussed that I didn’t see a pothole and I ran into it and twisted my ankle…. BAD! Where the ankle hurt for a few days, I was back at the gym lifting weights and on the bike 3 days after I hurt it. My thinking being, if I focus on exercises where there’s no risk of the ankle buckling or giving way, I’ll be OK.

The other issue I dealt with was the hip, which I mentioned at the start. As soon as the season had finished I entered into a rigorous physio therapy programme with Matthew Radcliffe, who is a the head physio for Southampton FC. Matt did a great job with me and seriously put me through the paces. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked so hard at physio, which I enjoyed as it was actually doing functional stuff that I knew would help and it kept me interested as I felt like I was actually having a workout.

The physio for the hip has worked as the times I’ve been on the ice, I’ve been skating pain free, which has shown me how much fun it can be. I was officially discharged from the hip physio and where I’m happy to know that I’ve been discharged and fit, I still have to do continuous exercises to ensure that the hip doesn’t flare up, that combined with a new pre-activation session.

Additionally, I’ve also been discharged from the ankle physio, which effectively brings to an end a regime of physio therapy that started in April. I think this summer I’ve been in physio for a longer period of time than ever before.

On the other hand though, my gym workouts have gone so well that I am actually feeling really good about the shape I am in and it is a definite step up compared to where I was starting from at the start of last season. Maybe more importantly the off season training has taught me more about mental toughness and discipline than anything else. I feel like the work I’ve put in, both in training and in physiotherapy has made me a stronger person and helped me to examine the game from a entirely new point of view. Despite the off ice training being hard and difficult at times, I have actually had fun doing it and I’m actually smiling at the gym, the same can be said of the times that I have been on the ice. Hockey is definitely fun again, which is something that I’ve missed among all the injuries I suffered with.

As for last season, well it is just that, it’s last season. I will take lessons from it, but for now my eyes are fixed on the 2011-2012 campaign. I think the most important lessons I have learnt this off season are those of patience, hard(er) work and trying out new things. I feel that I’m mentally stronger and I feel that I’ll be able to have fun instead of whitekncuckle the stick. There’s 6 days till we take to the ice as a team again, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing some of the guys I’ve not seen over the summer.

I can’t come up with a better ending to this than what a Finnish hockey journalist Jari Mesikammen (aka Karhuherra on twitter) said in his recent column: Forget about summer, drop the puck already!